WEBVTT - Weirdhouse Cinema: Silent Era Double Feature 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.080 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.920 --> 0:00:16.280 Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:18.239 And I'm Joe McCormick. And today is going to be 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:20.640 the first time on this show that we are going 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:23.880 to be looking at films of the Silent Era. Rob 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:26.000 and I were talking about this, and we think maybe 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:29.760 this will be a recurring episode type where we look 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:32.920 at a couple of short films from the Silent era, 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:35.360 because most films of this time are not very long. 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:37.280 Though maybe it would be hard to talk about for 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:39.920 an entire episode on their own, so we're doing a 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:41.000 double feature today. 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:45.760 Yeah. Boy, Already there's a lot of to unpack though, 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:48.839 because yes, it's true, there are a lot of short 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:52.959 silent films, but they are also a fair number. When 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:55.480 I was looking around at possibilities for today, some of 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:57.920 them are longer than you'd expect them to be. And 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:01.680 add to that that they are also silent films, which, 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:07.240 if you know, unless you're dealing with very certain high 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:12.000 standard silent films, you know, true classics of the time period, 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:15.640 it could feel a lot longer than it actually is. 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:18.199 You know, Oh yeah, totally. I mean I was thinking 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:21.119 about this before we got started. I was thinking about 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:26.000 that quote from Videodrome where Professor Brian Oblivion is talking 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:29.479 about television and he says, the television screen is the 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:33.640 retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:37.520 part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:42.319 appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:47.240 those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:51.040 is less than television. Now that's turned up a little 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:54.000 bit past the ten marker to get it into the 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:57.720 weirdness of Cronenberg territory. But essentially there's a nugget of 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:00.280 truth in that. And what I mean by that is 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:04.960 that the films of the Silent era have generally not 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:10.040 yet breached the raw experience threshold. They are works of 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:13.240 art that have to be appreciated across a kind of 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:18.720 mental distance and with effortful dedication of attention, more like 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:21.960 a painting or a work of fiction. In text, like 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:24.240 reading a book. You know, it takes a certain amount 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:28.160 of sustained, effortful attention to read a story, but at 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:31.720 a certain level of development. The techniques used in film 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:36.000 and television, especially once you introduce synchronized sound, and like 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:39.160 really good film editing techniques and good acting and all that. 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:42.760 At a certain point, they become so well honed that 0:02:42.960 --> 0:02:47.640 no effortful dedication of attention is required and no distance 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:51.120 must be crossed, Like the films of today are generally 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:55.920 automatically engrossing, even if they're not good, as soon as 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:59.360 you're aware of them, they're simply happening in your mind. 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:02.760 Yeah, that's a great point. So it's in a way, 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:06.880 interacting with a silent film or even a challenging piece 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:10.000 of stationary art, it's it's like one of those scenes 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:15.079 in Cronenberg Scanners where you're staring intently at another thing 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:18.600 and your your your brain is beginning to like boil 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:21.760 and swell in your head as you concentrate and force 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:26.440 yourself to merge your your consciousness with the art before you. 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:29.440 Yeah, totally. And so while I would say I really 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:31.800 enjoy a lot of silent films, but for me they 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:35.520 are they are not as easy, not as automatic, not 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:39.120 as magical as the films of the modern era that 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:42.160 are automatically engrossing. Like that, they're more like the way 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:45.200 I have to appreciate written fiction as text. You know 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.960 that there's something that can be very rewarding to pay 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:50.960 close attention to, but it takes work. 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:54.120 Yeah, And you know, when you when you mentioned films 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:57.000 of the modern era, it is worth noting just how 0:03:57.120 --> 0:04:01.440 quickly the technology and the craft evolve, because I think 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:03.440 both of our films that we're going to focus on 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:07.520 at lengths today are from the nineteen twenties. And as 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:11.200 an experiment, I looked at the year nineteen twenty five 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:15.040 and there's a silent film titled The Lost World from 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:17.880 that year, based on the story by Sir Arthur Conan 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:20.480 Doyle with dinosaurs in it. So of course it has 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:24.240 pioneering stop motion dino animation in it that looks really cool, 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:26.760 but it is still a silent film. There's still all 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:30.560 these barriers to being able to properly immerse yourself in it. 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:34.000 You fast forward just one decade and you have nineteen 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:36.719 thirty five, that's the year Mad Love came out, which, 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:40.600 you know, despite very much being an older film, you 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:44.440 can watch it and you become immersed in it and 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:46.560 you're feeling the characters and you feel like you're a 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:50.920 part of this world, and it illustrates just how far 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:53.400 it came in those ten years, you know, just how 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:56.960 much the craft and the technology changed, enabling you to 0:04:56.960 --> 0:05:00.960 tell different types of stories and bring the viewer closer, 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:06.560 you know, truly creating this videodrome situation that you described earlier. 0:05:06.839 --> 0:05:08.160 Yeah, and I would say there are a couple of 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:10.280 things there. I mean, I would say, like you're pointing out, 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:13.839 one of the main technological differences is synchronized sound. I 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:16.599 mean that that's a game changer on its own. But 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:18.440 on top of that, i'd say, with Mad Love, you 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:22.279 have a really exceptional example from its era as well, 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:27.640 the exceptional photographic techniques of Carl Freund. You know, behind 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:31.040 the camera, you've got the exceptional charisma of the actors 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:34.400 on screen, of course, the incomparable Peter Lorrie. Then you 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:37.880 have the hyper nervous energy of Colin Clive in it, 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:40.800 and so so all of that is true. But yeah, 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:43.560 as time goes on, it's funny how much the techniques 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:47.800 just like get developed and become sort of self referencing 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:54.200 and industrial automatic cliches, where even the bad movies of 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:58.560 today are typically very engrossing automatically, like if one's playing 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:01.520 in the room, you so easily just start watching it 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:03.400 and then it's just in your brain. 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:06.760 Yeah, well, and it is worth with no you mentioned 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:09.800 Carl Frond, the director of Mad Love. He of course 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:14.680 was cinematographer on nineteen twenty seven silent masterpiece Metropolis. So 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:19.240 the great work that would come with the talkies, I 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:21.400 mean it very much emerges from the silent era. Like 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:24.720 the silent era is the period in which the tools 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:28.760 were coming online, the sort of substructure of our cinematic 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:30.000 legacy was being built. 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:31.880 That's a very good point, and I would say for me, 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:36.080 Metropolis is probably the most engrossing silent film I've ever seen. 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:38.560 Yeah, that's one of the all time greats. So we 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:42.880 have to mention Nosferatu, the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, a 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:45.400 trip to the Moon, and I believe we talked about 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:46.880 a trip to the Moon a little bit in our 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:52.360 Invention series on filmmaking and photography, where we discussed more 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:55.719 of the technological side of the silent film era. 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:57.479 Oh, that's a very good point. If you want to 0:06:57.480 --> 0:06:59.320 get some background before the rest of this episode, you 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:01.760 could pause here, go listen to our entire series on 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:05.080 the Invention podcast that we did. But I think we 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:08.480 did one that started with the history of photography, beginning 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:09.120 with the camera. 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:11.480 Oh I think we started with the camera obscura. 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:13.920 Yeah, yeah, even going back to there, but then then 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:18.080 going into photography and then going into motion pictures, and 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:20.400 so if you want more contexts, probably a lot of 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:22.600 things that at this point I don't even remember that 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:25.120 we talked about, so I may have lost some really 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:27.560 good contexts. So if you want, go listen to that 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:29.560 and then come back and listen to the rest of this. 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:32.360 But so today we are going to be talking about 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:34.920 a couple of silent films. I think are they both 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:37.560 from the early twenties. Minds from nineteen twenty two is 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:38.680 yours from twenty. 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:43.880 One, It is, indeed from nineteen twenty one. Yes, Okay, However, 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:46.920 we are not doing any of the classics we discussed earlier. 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:49.520 I think both of these are harder to come by. 0:07:49.600 --> 0:07:53.600 They're maybe more obscure, So, you know, I think they're 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:56.800 both very fun choices, and in a way they're choices 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:01.840 that circumvent your expectations the silent era, unless you, of course, 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:04.520 are already just versed in the silent era and you 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:06.880 know a lot of the history and the culture of 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:08.000 what was going on at the time. 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:09.400 Yeah, all right, Joe, do. 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:10.640 You want to you want to go first and roll 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:11.600 right into your selection? 0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:14.800 Sure, I'll go first. The film I selected for this 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:19.800 episode is an early animated film by a German filmmaker 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:23.720 named Latta Reineger, and it is the nineteen twenty two 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:28.760 short film Cinderella. The German title is Ashenpuddle. Now. My 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:32.320 main source of biographical information about Reineger comes from the 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:37.160 twenty nineteen New York Times retrospective by Debbie Lockwood, which 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:40.440 is part of a series called Overlooked, which seems to 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:44.320 be sort of post hoc obituaries for remarkable people who 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:47.480 originally didn't get obituaries in the Times when they passed away. 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:51.679 So Lota Reineger was born Charlotte Reineger. I think Lotta 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:55.040 is a German shortening of the name Charlotte. She was 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:58.440 born on June second, eighteen ninety nine to carl and 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:02.480 Eleanor Reineger and live in Berlin. And when she was 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:08.000 in school she learned about something called scheren Schnitte, which 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:11.680 means scissor cuts in German, and this was similar to 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:14.720 a Chinese art form that dated back hundreds of years, 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:17.280 but it had become popular in German art at the time, 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:21.280 I think in Swiss art too, and essentially it consisted 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:25.720 of making art by cutting silhouette images out of paper 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:30.240 with fine shears. But Lotta Reineger enjoyed this art form 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:32.680 when she was young, cutting out silhouettes of people. She 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:35.480 knew not just to mount them on the wall or 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:38.200 press them in an album, but she would make them 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:42.079 move and act out scenes in a homemade shadow theater 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:46.440 to do scenes from the plays of Shakespeare. And as 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:49.640 she got older, she became interested in the at this 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:54.280 point blossoming art form of film, originally thinking of becoming 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:58.000 an actress, but she soon discovered the possibilities of animation 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:00.680 as an art form that's unique to film, and of 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:03.480 course this would have been still during the Silent era, 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:07.040 and she ended up studying at the Max Reinhardt School 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:10.680 of Acting under the German filmmaker Paul Wegner, where she 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:13.719 showed off her talent for silhouette cutting, cutting out these 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:18.360 figures in paper and then, to read from Debbie Lockwood's 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:21.840 article quote, Wegner soon enlisted her to help with his 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:25.760 nineteen eighteen film The Pied Piper of Hamlin, an adaptation 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:28.200 of the folk legend about a man who's hired to 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:31.360 play his magic flute to lure away rats from a 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:34.240 German town. When the town refuses to pay him for 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:37.400 his services, the piper plays another tune to hypnotize the 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:40.160 children and lead them out of the town, never to 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:44.000 be seen again. Wegner had Reineger help him animate wooden 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:47.680 puppet rats for the film, and after this she had 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:50.360 the bugs. She wanted to make films for a living, 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:54.080 so she later met and married an art historian named 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:57.280 Carl Koch, who she would collaborate with on a number 0:10:57.280 --> 0:10:59.800 of her films, and her career would go on at 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:03.440 this point to span sixty years, including over seventy films 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:08.240 animated by this silhouette cutout technique, where she would cut 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:12.520 figures out of paper with scissors and then film them 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:16.120 moving on a transparent surface to create the action that 0:11:16.160 --> 0:11:17.120 you see on the screen. 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:21.120 Now, Paul Wegen, who you mentioned earlier, for anyone out 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:25.079 there who just wondering who that is, he was one 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:28.720 of the directors and writers on the nineteen fifteen film 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:32.760 The Golum. You've probably seen images of this. The clay 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.480 golum figure in black and white, very haunting, and he 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:38.040 also played the golum. 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:42.200 Yes, that is correct. So in nineteen nineteen, Lada Reiniger 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:47.040 and Carl Koch together created a silhouette animated short film 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:50.320 called The Ornament of the Heart in Love, which is, 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:53.720 in the words of Debbie Lockwood, here about two lovers, 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:57.440 both ballet dancers, and a morphing ornament between them that 0:11:57.520 --> 0:11:58.920 represents their emotions. 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:02.040 Now, one thing I really love about that description is 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:06.160 that if that description sounds like you could easily describe 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:10.200 a current or upcoming Pixar short, you know. So an 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:13.640 area of animation, of mainstream animation where we often think 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:16.200 of like this is where the really inventive ideas and 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:19.600 formats that are going to be explored, you know, and 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:22.120 we think of it as kind of at times, we 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:23.720 can think of it as a place that we can 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:27.760 only come to after, you know, a century of animation 0:12:27.880 --> 0:12:31.600 and filmmaking. But here we are in nineteen nineteen, and 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:36.440 there's just as much ingenuity and creativity in using you know, 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:38.880 different formats to tell a story with visuals. 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:41.559 That's a very good point. Yeah, early on, there was 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:45.160 a lot of elasticity about what a film could be, 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:47.600 what should be the contents of a film. 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:50.040 So while well, today it's more like what can we 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:52.560 break to create something new? Like this is an age 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:54.839 where a lot of stuff was unformed, you know. It 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:57.840 was the amorphous age of filmmaking. 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:01.400 Yeah, yeah, So her most his famous film is the 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:05.360 nineteen twenty six silent movie The Adventures of Prince Ahmed, 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:08.480 which is an adaptation of the Arabic classic One thousand 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:11.800 and one Nights, which was one of the first feature 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:16.000 length animated films in history. And to quote from Lockwood 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:22.240 here describing her technological and creative process, quote, Reineger's editing 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:25.240 was meticulous. Starting with more than two hundred and fifty 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:28.600 thousand frames, she and her crew used just over one 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:31.679 hundred thousand in the film, which ran for an hour 0:13:31.720 --> 0:13:35.720 and twenty one minutes each second, requiring twenty four frames. 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:39.959 It took three years to complete and premiered in Volkspoon 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:44.480 or People's Theater in Berlin when Reineger was twenty seven. 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:49.520 The film showcased the fantastical potential of animation. A prince 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:52.680 defeated an army of demons to win over a princess, 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:57.959 birds battled witches and sorcerers, horses flew. The French film 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:02.040 director Jeanrenois saw Princemed on its opening night in Paris 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:05.000 and later recalled that he wanted to tell her, you 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:10.600 have fairy hands. Reineger designed a complex process to make 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:14.240 her films. She cut each limb of each figure out 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:18.040 of black cardboard and thin lead, then join them together 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:21.760 with wire hinges. For research, she spent hours at the 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:25.960 Zoo Berlin watching how the animals moved. And then I 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:28.880 was reading later in this article that she also pioneered 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:33.280 new technology for creating animated films, including a device called 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:36.960 a trick tish or trick table, and this involved a 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:40.600 camera that would be hanging in the air facing down 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:44.080 onto a table made of layers of glass, which would 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:47.600 form the stage for the silhouette cutouts to play upon, 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:50.720 and then you would have a bright light underneath that 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:53.520 would cause the wire hinges used at the joints of 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:58.280 these figures to disappear, and it was basically stop motion animation. 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:00.800 They would take a photo of a that she had 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:03.960 set out, and then she would advance the figures slightly 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:06.840 in their movement to advance the action, and then take 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:11.320 a photo again building the film frame by frame. Now, 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:14.360 as with any German filmmaker working in the first half 0:15:14.400 --> 0:15:18.520 of the twentieth century, you end up wondering, okay, did 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:20.960 they end up within the Hitler machine right, Because of 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:24.760 course Nazi Germany was big on using film as propaganda. 0:15:25.160 --> 0:15:27.080 So I was reading about this, and it seems like 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:30.680 after Hitler came to power, Lata and Carl left to 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:33.560 Germany and tried to make a life in other countries 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:37.040 like France and Italy and England. Apparently they were politically 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:41.000 opposed to Hitler, but they could not get visas, or 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:43.800 they couldn't get the visas they wanted to stay permanently 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:45.640 in the other countries they went to, so it seems 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:49.880 like they were essentially taking long vacations in other countries 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:52.600 where they were working and then having to come back 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:55.520 and then leave again. They were eventually forced to move 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:58.480 back to Berlin in nineteen forty four, apparently to take 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:01.960 care of Latta's mother, who is very sick, and I 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.160 can only find evidence that she worked on one film 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:08.320 in this period called The Golden Goose, which I have 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.160 seen described as a propaganda film, but I can't find 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:14.320 much about it, so I don't know, but together they 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:17.480 moved to England in nineteen forty eight and she made 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:20.600 some children's films for the BBC, and she passed away 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:23.560 on June nineteenth, nineteen eighty one, at the age of 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:34.240 eighty two. So the film that we're going to be 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:38.160 looking at today is from her early period, from nineteen 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:42.640 twenty two, and it is an adaptation of the Cinderella 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:46.480 folk tale. I was reading about this in Lockwood's article 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:50.320 where apparently the Cinderella adaptation was reviewed by The New 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:54.080 York Times in nineteen twenty eight, where the author Charles 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:57.360 Morgan wrote, the small black shapes laugh at you from 0:16:57.360 --> 0:17:00.600 a world of their own, into which naturalism makes no 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:04.600 laborious entry. And I really like phrasing it like that, 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:08.679 because I think this little animated film is wonderful. And uh, 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:12.800 and I see what he meant by that with naturalism 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:17.280 makes no laborious entry. Something about the animation style feels 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:18.760 so free. 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:23.320 Yes, yes, this is a beautiful picture. And if anybody 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:25.439 who wants to see that, the two films that we're 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:27.960 discussing here, I'll make sure that I include links to 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:31.080 them or embedded versions of them on the blog post. 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:34.399 That accompanies this episode at Summuda music dot com. But 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:38.600 the yeah, the style of this is so divorced from 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:42.080 from reality. It just comes out of It's like it's 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:45.240 a reality that is passed from from from fairy tale 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:48.680 book to fairytale book. You know, there was a there's 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:51.240 a quote that you included in the in our notes 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:55.280 for this episode from Ao Scott where he describes quote 0:17:55.359 --> 0:17:58.280 dreamy images that seem to tap right into the collective 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:01.399 unconscious that suggests both in antidote to Disney and a 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:05.200 precursor to Tim Burton. And it's interesting that Scott mentioned 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:09.480 Disney here because in nineteen twenty two, Disney Walt Disney 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:13.520 the Animator also put out a Cinderella animated short. But 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:15.919 it is very much connected to the real world. Like 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:18.720 you see, I didn't even watch it in its entirety. 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:20.680 I just kind of flipped around and got a sense 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:23.600 of it. But like there are scenes of like flapper culture, 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:25.800 you know, and stuff like that, and like it's very 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:30.560 it's hitched to the real world of the time, whereas yeah, 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:33.960 this one is it seems to exist in an artistic 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:37.000 unreality that is so much more engrossing. 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:40.359 Yeah, so it is the story of Cinderella. The story 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:44.119 element is fairly straightforward, but it's the animation that really 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:47.439 sings here. It is an animation based on these silhouettes, 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:52.120 these cutout these paper cutout figure silhouettes and stop motion animation. 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:56.240 And as for the plot content, it is decidedly more 0:18:56.280 --> 0:19:00.240 in the brothers grim direction than the sanitized versions would 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:03.280 come later, like the in the full length animated Cinderella 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:06.480 by Disney and so in that version, And so that 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:09.200 means that in this version it is a magic tree 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:12.359 instead of a fairy godmother, a creepy magic tree on 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:13.800 a hill and a cemetery. 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:17.240 Yeah, it's as if nature itself is the force that 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:21.399 answers her call, as opposed to, you know, any particular human, 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:22.679 humanized force. 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:27.120 Yeah. You also get that Cinderella's wicked stepsister absolutely does 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:29.600 chop off part of her own foot in order to 0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:32.320 fit into the slipper and get with the prince. Oh yes, 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:35.200 but the slipper fills up with blood and it doesn't work. 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:37.760 And then there's a really funny scene where the other 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:41.120 sister tries is she's about to chop off her own 0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:43.080 foot to fit in the slipper, and the Prince is 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:44.320 just like, no, no. 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:48.400 Yeah, this is such a fun silent film. Like when 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:50.439 I told that my family, I'm like, hey, guys, we're 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:53.040 gonna sit down and watch a silent film together. And 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:55.160 the boy didn't really even know what I meant by 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:57.080 that because he didn't have much exposure to sign films. 0:19:57.280 --> 0:20:01.360 My wife was hesitant. Then I'm like, don't worry. It's 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:05.640 it's animated, and it's it's Cinderella, and it's really really delightful. 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:08.359 It's you know, has kind of a shadow puppetry. I 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:09.800 look to it, and so they're like, okay, and we 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:12.879 sit down. We watched it. The the the bits of 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:16.840 humor generated laughter from all of us. The toe cutting 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:21.199 made us all scream out loud, you know, in a 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:24.399 fun way, because it's, you know, the style divorces it 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:28.200 enough from reality that you're not legitimately horrified, but you're like, ah, 0:20:28.359 --> 0:20:32.200 don't do that, so it Yeah, it's just tremendous fun. Now. 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:35.520 One choice about this movie that I found very interesting 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:40.480 was the choice to include the animation method as part 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:43.320 of the narrative. So I don't know, Rob, did the 0:20:43.440 --> 0:20:48.280 version you watched have title cards or or what language 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:49.720 were the title cards in if it did. 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:53.000 Oh, well, the version I watched it did have some 0:20:53.080 --> 0:20:55.280 title cards, but I believe they were No, they were 0:20:55.280 --> 0:21:00.200 in English. Maybe I just didn't read them. I was 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:01.919 just getting set up at the time. But for the 0:21:01.960 --> 0:21:04.840 most part, Yeah, it's just a visual presentation, and I 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:08.040 guess it helps to know the story. So as we 0:21:08.080 --> 0:21:10.200 watched it, we were kind of taking it apart a 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:11.800 little bit. We're like, oh, yeah, I guess she's doing 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:15.000 this now, Oh, yes, this must be instead of a 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:18.159 fairy godmother, it's this tree and now the birds are 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:19.160 involved that sort of thing. 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:22.560 Well, I meant the inter title cards, yeah, between the action. 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:24.600 Well, you know now that you mention it, though, Joe. 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:28.159 The version that I watched with my family was on vimeo, okay, 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:31.080 and I don't think that one had title cards in it. 0:21:31.160 --> 0:21:33.359 I think that was just the animation. But I've been 0:21:33.400 --> 0:21:35.679 playing the YouTube version in the corner of my screen 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:40.240 as we record here, and yeah, I'm getting some dialogue 0:21:40.280 --> 0:21:42.960 that was not present in the version we screened. 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:45.239 Yes, so at the beginning of the version. There are 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:49.040 different versions. Different ones have different title cards, inner titles, 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:52.960 and the version that I was watching had the English 0:21:53.000 --> 0:21:56.960 titles that begin what Cinderella suffered from the two sisters 0:21:56.960 --> 0:22:00.600 and her stepmother, how she grew into a fairy princess. 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:03.880 Here is seen told by a pair of scissors on 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:07.280 a screen, so they're like including the fact that this 0:22:07.440 --> 0:22:09.840 is made by scissors, and it's in the animation too. 0:22:10.200 --> 0:22:14.320 It begins with black silhouettes on a blue background of 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:17.399 a small pair of scissors kicking around in the void, 0:22:17.440 --> 0:22:20.800 almost like a frog paddling in the water. And then 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:22.960 a pair of hands comes in and they chase the 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:26.280 scissors around, they catch them, and then they use them 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:28.240